46. [Uicha] Memory Shuffle (Patreon)

--DRAMATIS PERSONAE—

Uicha de Orak, a young man of no renown or loyalty, a master of his memories

Ahmed Roh, Archmage of the 15th Renown, the Magelab, a master of magic

Kayenna Vezz, sorcerer of the old Kingdom of Orvesis, a master of the old ways

***

Now and then

Here or there

858,197 memories until brain death

Uicha's mother had taught him different ways to shuffle cards. A double-wave, a stacked box, a corner push—all the techniques necessary in the unlikely event he needed to deal a crooked game of five card. Hundreds of small lessons, bored days spent alone in his bedroom, moments of practice when Uicha wasn’t even aware of his hands working, spread across hours of memories. His skill with a deck was part of who he was now, impossible to pin down to a single memory.

In much the same way that he learned card tricks, so had Kayenna Vezz taught Uicha how to navigate his own mind. Focus on separating the present self from the past self. Don’t be subsumed by the urges of a Uicha long gone. Don’t let one memory wash him into another. Control the trajectory of his thoughts. Thumb through them like pages in a book.

So many memories of sinking into his bed, staring at the ceiling, wishing for something to change—Uicha’s most natural habitat. He needed to resist the pull of those remembrances.

Most of his lessons with Kayenna were foggy or gone entirely on account of how they usually ended—with Ahmed Roh invading Uicha’s mind and siphoning out his memories. However much Roh carved up his psyche, the skill remained, so long as Uicha could remember to use it. Roh set Uicha adrift in his own consciousness, but Kayenna always pulled him back to the surface. When he regained awareness, slipping through his history was as easy as pressing his thumb to the corner of a deck and letting it rip across the cards.

Uicha rode the memory of his last night in Ambergran. He fled past Petra's prone body, grabbed his mother's scimitar, and burst through the farmhouse backdoor. Except, instead of plunging into the fields and sprinting into the night, he stepped through the front door of the farmhouse, right back into the living room. A disorienting loop, for a moment, the way the memories connected.

He put himself in the night when he had first discovered the urn’chan. Uicha was both standing over his kitchen table with the capsule clutched in his hands, gazing down at the glowing wards carved into the metal, and he was standing off to the side, observing that first blurry version of himself. How he wished that he could go back to before that moment and never open his parents’ safe. But the memories of his stupidity were unchangeable.

Uicha would meet the archmage in this memory. If all went as they hoped, he would force Ahmed Roh to put further strain upon his arcane abilities. Uicha would try to keep him distracted and off-balance. Such was the plan.

The plan. Uicha winced at the thought and his focus faltered just a bit. Kayenna warned him it would be painful and ugly. Uicha was still a little stunned that he had agreed to participate. But then, there was something deep inside him that hated Ahmed Roh and his ilk, men like Battar Crodd, who saw Uicha and people like him as no more than blades of grass to be crushed beneath their world-striding footfalls. He wondered if maybe his new purpose in life should be to make things difficult for the great egos of Emza. If he was to die, Uicha decided, it would be as a giant pain in the ass. 

He could sense the archmage’s essence drawing closer. He was an intruder in Uicha's mind and thus his unwelcome presence was marked by monstrous characteristics. In this memory, Roh manifested as thundering steps on the porch.

And yet, when Roh pushed through the front door, the man looked more tired than threatening. This was an approximation of Roh's psyche and so Uicha couldn't help but notice the wrinkled sleeves of his burgundy suit, the way his undershirt was dotted with sweat and half untucked, and the sallow bags under the old man's eyes. Kayenna had said he was weakening—losing his grip on the mind magic Uicha barely understood—and that now was the time to strike. Seeing Roh made Uicha believe the Orvesian ghost was right.

“Ah,” Roh said, upon seeing Uicha standing apart from the memory of himself. “Your control is improving.”

“Is it?” Uicha asked. He scratched a hand over his thick head of hair. He felt young and strong and wanted to project this aura toward Roh, to make him feel his own exhaustion more acutely.

However, Roh seemed more interested in the Uicha of memory. He winced and took a halting step toward the remembered version of Uicha, as if he might slap the urn'chan out of his hands. “Look at how careless you are, fool boy!”

“Believe me, I know,” Uicha replied coolly. “I didn't understand what would happen to me. Just like I don't understand what's happening to me now.”

“Your mind has been infected by a foreign spirit,” Roh replied tiredly as he turned to face Uicha. “I am conducting a sort of psychic surgery. The process is… imprecise.”

Uicha sensed a routineness to Roh’s reply. “Have we had this conversation before?”

“In a way. You are not often this cognizant.” Roh hesitated. “In fact, your level of awareness is cause for concern.”

The archmage made a gesture with his long-fingered hand and his sharp black eyes went far away. Uicha felt a curling and twisting pain at his sternum—he knew, instinctively, that Roh had begun the process of pulling this memory from him. 

Instead of giving over to him, Uicha shuffled the deck. 

Uicha found himself standing in the ramshackle tavern at the center of the sad little town of Briarbridge. His pulse quickened—or he imagined it quickening—at the sight of Sara Free, his beautiful protector from the Ministry of Sulk. She sat across the table from Trick Longblossom, the old friend of his father's, his eyes red-rimmed from holding back tears, but grinning nonetheless. A few tables away sat Erhan Teta, the mage who studied horses, and his two candle protectors. If Uicha let the memory go, the innkeeper's assistant would soon scurry over to refill their drinks, blushing as he told Sara that there was usually music. This would be minutes before the body of the fiddler fell onto the roof, dropped by one of the gargoyles sent to fetch Uicha. Instead, Uicha held the memory frozen, and waited. 

Ahmed Roh didn’t take long to catch up. Pots and pans clattered dramatically in the kitchen and then the archmage burst into view, rounding the bar and glaring fiercely. 

“You make this more difficult than necessary,” he snapped. 

“You've kidnapped me and invaded my memory,” Uicha replied. “What incentive do I have to cooperate?”

In the real world, Uicha would have never spoken to an archmage of the Magelab like that, but he felt more confident inside of his own head.

“Do you rate pain as an incentive?” Roh said, leering at him. “I have been merciful with you so far…”

“You call this merciful?” Uicha made a face. “Anyway, I don’t believe you. If you thought pain would get you what you're after faster, I'd already be screaming in agony.” Before Roh could respond—or make good on his threat—Uicha waved a hand at the ceiling. “You killed a man here, you know? One of your gargoyles mauled him and dropped him from the sky.”

“I gave those gargoyles free will,” Roh said. “If his death were my responsibility, the gods would have intervened. I owe the matter no further consideration.”

“You make my point for me, Master Roh,” Uicha said. “You're a man who chooses the most expedient way, even if it leaves your hands bloody. So, don't pretend you're doing me any favors. I caught a glimpse of my accommodations. We slaughtered chickens with more care.”

Roh settled against the front of the tavern’s bar, leaning his hip into the wood. He looked like an old man with a bad back.

“She's gotten to you,” Roh said. “The witch of old Orvesis has taught you how to memory walk and how to resist me. She manipulates you for her own survival, boy. Vezz has mingled her memories with yours. She uses your consciousness as a shield, leaving me no choice but to extract your memories to find hers.”

“You could stop,” Uicha said. “Let me go and leave me alone. That’s a choice you could make.”

“She was meant to stay buried, locked away,” Roh replied. “Until I had the means to open the vessel…”

Kayenna had told him that only someone without Ink could have opened the urn'chan. A stupid coincidence that Uicha had bumbled across it after losing his affinity for Ambergran. Battar Crodd had wanted Kayenna Vezz's memories, too, and had murdered half of Ambergran to create a clear path to them. But, although he’d held Uicha in a comfortable captivity, Crodd never seemed interested in reburying the memories. Uicha wondered what these men wanted from the dead witch—or didn’t want someone else to find.

“What I do is for your own good,” Roh continued. “I will leave you as whole as I can, with only your memories of this unfortunate situation extracted. You will be able to return to your inconsequential life.”

Weeks ago, Uicha might have accepted that offer. He had no desire to serve as a vessel for Kayenna Vezz. But now, he understood the archmage’s assistance was heavy with consequences. There wasn’t an iota of altruism in the old bastard.  

“I don't believe you,” Uicha said. “You still think you'll be able to cover your tracks. That means leaving me a drooling amnesiac dropped by the side of a road.”

Roh drew himself up, his dark eyes flashing. “I am a champion of the Magelab. An archmage of the fifteenth renown. I do not need to ‘cover my tracks’ like some squalid crimi-”

“Weren't my parents covering your tracks, though? If Kayenna's remains are so important, why didn't you bring them to the Magelab for safekeeping? Why leave them with a couple of pirates?”

The old man’s brow creased. “These are matters above your bumpkin's education-”

“And where's your candle?” Uicha asked, waving at Erhan's table, where the horse mage sat frozen mid-scribble. “I don't think you mages are supposed to be traveling alone, right?”

“I require no escort,” Roh said, but Uicha sensed some vigor leaking from the archmage’s protestations. 

“You didn’t want anyone to know what you’re getting up to,” Uicha continued. “But the Orvesians all know about me and Kayenna Vezz. And I told Sara Free of the Ministry, too.” That was a lie, but one he figured the archmage would believe. “You used gargoyles for the attack on Briarbridge to make it look like the Orvesians, but do you really think that will hold up forever? I think you've made a mess, archmage. I bet there are already people looking for you, wondering where you are, and what you're up to. You're probably going to be in big trouble if even half of this comes to light. Am I right? You need this over quickly, and quietly, and I bet I can mess that up for you.”

Uicha could tell he had hit on the truth because for once Ahmed Roh said nothing.

And then, the pain came. It felt distant at first, like someone pinching him while he napped, but then the sensation tore into the front of his mind. Uicha gasped and groped at his forearm, pulling it close to his body as if he could protect it. The bone felt broken—

—because it was. His ulna jutted out through the soft tissue of his forearm, splitting flesh and spilling blood onto the floorboards beneath him. The bone had fractured jaggedly, extending out in a point, tipped further by a razor-sharp carapace of ice.

Uicha’s consciousness stretched painfully between two competing realities. In one, he faced Ahmed Roh in his memory of the Briarbridge Tavern. In the other, he hung from the ceiling of an overheated room that stunk of ritual and gore.

“Focus!” Kayenna Vezz screamed at him. “Leave this to me! You must keep him distracted!”

The Orvesian ghost had taken control of Uicha’s physical body. She had broken his arm with her magic and now used the icicle-bone to saw through the rope attaching him to the ceiling, feeding Uicha’s blood to the spell to keep the ice from melting in the room’s warmth. The pain was so great that Uicha felt the urge to shove Kayenna away—he would bury her back in his subconscious, come awake in his body, and suffer this injury for himself. That was an animal reaction, though. Uicha couldn’t let it win.

“Focus, Uicha!” Kayenna shouted into his mind again. “He grows suspicious!”

The sensation was like forcing his eyes closed. Uicha shoved himself back into his mind, leaving Kayenna to the gruesome work of cutting his body free. Back in the tavern, he exhaled a quick breath and let his arm hang limp at his side.

Ahmed Roh stood closer now and seemed somehow taller—a combination of suspicion and anger had restored some of the archmage’s psychic projection. He leaned down over Uicha, his shadow like a storm cloud.

“What was that?” Roh asked. “Where did you go?”

“She’s hurting me,” Uicha replied. “Because she knows I’m going to make you an offer.”

The archmage’s eyes narrowed. “How--?”

Without warning, Uicha grabbed Roh by the lapels and moved them through his memories. The tavern’s floorboards were swallowed by drifts of snow, the ceiling opened up to sky, and they stood on a cliff overlooking an army of Orvesians on the march.

Roh brushed Uicha’s hands away lightly, distracted by the view. “What is this?”

“Kayenna showed me this memory once,” Uicha said. “It’s one of hers. And I can lead you to others.”

Uicha gave Roh a moment to gaze in awe upon the vast Orvesian horde, then took his hand and shuffled the deck again. This time, they appeared back in Uicha's farmhouse, in the same memory of family game night that Uicha had visited before. His mom sat at the table ready to slap down her hand of cards, his father grinning nearby. 

Roh rounded on him immediately. “Do not toy with me, boy!”

Uicha backpedaled, holding up his hands. “I’m not trying to play games, master. I’m trying to negotiate.”

The archmage and the boy from Ambergran found themselves on opposite sides of the table, Uicha’s parents in between them. Roh glanced at them, his eyes lingering on Uicha’s mother.

“Perhaps I have underestimated you,” Roh said. “As I once underestimated her.”

Meanwhile, in the physical world, the first rope frayed and snapped.